Marina Vasilyeva was born on 20 July 1931 in the
Velizhsky District of
Smolensk Oblast, but evacuated with her family to
Novosibirsk during
World War II. She began learning to fly as a child but, following the war, the Soviet Union barred women from serving as military pilots. At the age of 16, presenting herself as 22 years old, she wrote to Soviet Marshal
Kliment Voroshilov asking to be admitted to a flying school. Voroshilov intervened on her behalf and she was admitted to the Novosibirsk Aviation Technicum where she graduated in 1951. Initially, she worked as an engineer, then later as a flying instructor. In 1962, she entered into the first group of women that would train to become cosmonauts in the Soviet space program. After two months of training, she was turned away from the program. she broke the sound barrier in a
MiG-21. She entered the military reserves in 1978 and then joined the
Antonov Design Bureau as a test pilot. At Antonov, she set ten flight records on the
Antonov An-22 turboprop. She retired in 1984. Marina Popovich, a Russian Writers' Union member, authored nine books, including the poetry collection
Zhizn – vechny vzlyot (Life's An Eternal Rise, 1972). and
Buket Fialok (Bouquet of Violets, 1983). Popovich died on November 30, 2017. She was buried with
military honors at the
Federal Military Memorial Cemetery.
Claims about UFOs Marina Popovich spoke about her experience with UFOs in her book titled
UFO Glasnost (published in 1991 in Germany) and in public lectures and interviews. She claimed that the Soviet military and civilian pilots had confirmed 3000 UFO sightings and that the Soviet Air Forces and
KGB had recovered fragments of five crashed UFOs. The crash sites were
Tunguska (1908),
Novosibirsk,
Tallinn,
Ordzhonikidze and
Dalnegorsk (1986). == Private life ==